Chapter 10.1
I went to a predominantly white Baptist Christian school for most of my educational career. It's a time in my life that I've tried my best to forget. Let's just say that being one of very few minorities in a mostly white school can create crisES in identity. It took me years of deprogramming to reach a healthy and authentic black self. In all seriousness.
But this chapter is not about my blackness (which is one of my favorite topics). This chapter is about the sound of music. When I was in tenth grade, I finally had my first black teachers. Two, in fact. The only two black teachers I had in primary or secondary school. The first was Mrs. Warner, my World History teacher. She was West Indian, which didn't mean much to my very African-American world. I was a few years away from my African diaspora awareness.
My other teacher was Mrs. Anderson who absolutely terrified and fascinated me. Mrs. Anderson didn't play the radio. She was super strict (mean when I was a teen) and rarely smiled if at all. I'd watch her with fear behind my eighties' glasses, hold my fingers over the keys, and prepare for the clack-clack and ding-ding of that big bulky black typewriter.
We had to line our fingers just so over the home keys as she recited the order of our typing lessons: aaa, ;;;, sss, lll. We weren't allowed to look down at the keys as those silver bars banged out the alphabet + punctuation.
We only had one semester to learn the basics of typing, and it was my favorite class that year. I was a writer even then--writing novels, stories and poetry laboriously by hand. I'd keep my novels in thick three-ring-binders, but I'd hear the clanging of the typewriter even as my pen flew across the page. When we moved to words and sentences, classwork propped up on the right sight as we typed the words we saw, I felt like I was playing the piano. I was moving the carriage back and forth trying to type without error. When the carriage stopped all the way to the right, I'd slide it back in position and start all over again.
We could only make a limited amount of mistakes since using the ribbon to "erase" mistakes was frowned upon. They were never really erased anyway, were they? You could still see the press of the wrong letter on the paper. That was the thing about those old typewriters. They sang with productivity, made you feel like you were hard at work, but they were very unfriendly if you were error-prone.
When I eventually got my own typewriter and started typing my stories, there was something magical in seeing my words in print. There was a realness to it that just didn't translate as well when I wrote longhand. Strangely, though I appreciate the ease of modern technology, I miss how writerly that old mechanical typewriter made me feel.
I went to a predominantly white Baptist Christian school for most of my educational career. It's a time in my life that I've tried my best to forget. Let's just say that being one of very few minorities in a mostly white school can create crisES in identity. It took me years of deprogramming to reach a healthy and authentic black self. In all seriousness.
But this chapter is not about my blackness (which is one of my favorite topics). This chapter is about the sound of music. When I was in tenth grade, I finally had my first black teachers. Two, in fact. The only two black teachers I had in primary or secondary school. The first was Mrs. Warner, my World History teacher. She was West Indian, which didn't mean much to my very African-American world. I was a few years away from my African diaspora awareness.
My other teacher was Mrs. Anderson who absolutely terrified and fascinated me. Mrs. Anderson didn't play the radio. She was super strict (mean when I was a teen) and rarely smiled if at all. I'd watch her with fear behind my eighties' glasses, hold my fingers over the keys, and prepare for the clack-clack and ding-ding of that big bulky black typewriter.
We had to line our fingers just so over the home keys as she recited the order of our typing lessons: aaa, ;;;, sss, lll. We weren't allowed to look down at the keys as those silver bars banged out the alphabet + punctuation.
We only had one semester to learn the basics of typing, and it was my favorite class that year. I was a writer even then--writing novels, stories and poetry laboriously by hand. I'd keep my novels in thick three-ring-binders, but I'd hear the clanging of the typewriter even as my pen flew across the page. When we moved to words and sentences, classwork propped up on the right sight as we typed the words we saw, I felt like I was playing the piano. I was moving the carriage back and forth trying to type without error. When the carriage stopped all the way to the right, I'd slide it back in position and start all over again.
We could only make a limited amount of mistakes since using the ribbon to "erase" mistakes was frowned upon. They were never really erased anyway, were they? You could still see the press of the wrong letter on the paper. That was the thing about those old typewriters. They sang with productivity, made you feel like you were hard at work, but they were very unfriendly if you were error-prone.
When I eventually got my own typewriter and started typing my stories, there was something magical in seeing my words in print. There was a realness to it that just didn't translate as well when I wrote longhand. Strangely, though I appreciate the ease of modern technology, I miss how writerly that old mechanical typewriter made me feel.
Chapter 1.2
My father died on May 5th, 1981 in a car accident on his way to work. He was thirty-four years old. I remember the day he died. My siblings and I were home alone (cause back then, that’s what people did). My mother hadn’t gotten home with my baby sister yet. Someone rang the door bell, but my mother always told us to never open the door for anyone. She didn’t care if it was her momma. We were forbidden from opening the door. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t peek out the window.
We looked outside and saw a police officer standing at the door. I remember the sound of my thundering heartbeat tripping in my ears. We might have considered opening the door, but that was not about to happen. Right above our fear of God was our fear of Momma. I think the officer wore brown, but that was thirty-seven years ago. I can’t remember. I do know that the sight of him, even in my nine-year-old mind was a bad, bad omen.
The police officer was a state trooper, and the state trooper had brought news of my father’s death. He left the news with our nearest neighbor Phyllis, and Phyllis brought the news down the street to us. It’s crazy how the sun shone brighter and everybody’s face was sharper and the street seemed emptier on the day the world stopped. I can still see even the smallest detail—like how tears slid down my face when I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom. But the world was silent. Crazy, right? My father commuted over an hour to work everyday, from Orlando to Melbourne, Florida. He left six in the morning and came home about six in the evening. Twelve hour days my father put in, but I mostly remember him being gone by the time we got up in the mornings and coming home just an hour or so before bedtime.
Weekends, though, were the best. He would get up on Saturday mornings and often cook breakfast for the family. But most importantly, he would be there on the weekends. With us on Saturdays. Church on Sundays. My parents had considered relocating to Melbourne, but they didn’t. They stayed in Orlando and made it work until it stopped working on May 5th. That was my first funeral.
My father died on May 5th, 1981 in a car accident on his way to work. He was thirty-four years old. I remember the day he died. My siblings and I were home alone (cause back then, that’s what people did). My mother hadn’t gotten home with my baby sister yet. Someone rang the door bell, but my mother always told us to never open the door for anyone. She didn’t care if it was her momma. We were forbidden from opening the door. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t peek out the window.
We looked outside and saw a police officer standing at the door. I remember the sound of my thundering heartbeat tripping in my ears. We might have considered opening the door, but that was not about to happen. Right above our fear of God was our fear of Momma. I think the officer wore brown, but that was thirty-seven years ago. I can’t remember. I do know that the sight of him, even in my nine-year-old mind was a bad, bad omen.
The police officer was a state trooper, and the state trooper had brought news of my father’s death. He left the news with our nearest neighbor Phyllis, and Phyllis brought the news down the street to us. It’s crazy how the sun shone brighter and everybody’s face was sharper and the street seemed emptier on the day the world stopped. I can still see even the smallest detail—like how tears slid down my face when I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom. But the world was silent. Crazy, right? My father commuted over an hour to work everyday, from Orlando to Melbourne, Florida. He left six in the morning and came home about six in the evening. Twelve hour days my father put in, but I mostly remember him being gone by the time we got up in the mornings and coming home just an hour or so before bedtime.
Weekends, though, were the best. He would get up on Saturday mornings and often cook breakfast for the family. But most importantly, he would be there on the weekends. With us on Saturdays. Church on Sundays. My parents had considered relocating to Melbourne, but they didn’t. They stayed in Orlando and made it work until it stopped working on May 5th. That was my first funeral.
Chapter 1.1
I've decided to rewrite my biography in first person. I've kept the original version below, but I wanted a remix.
This photos of my parents above were taken in 1970, when my mother was pregnant with my older sister. I think about how young my parents were: posing with their dreams, unaware of where their lives would actually lead. They had met at Florida Technological University in 1968 (later renamed University of Central Florida), both of them having grown up in segregated neighborhoods and attended all black secondary schools [She was a graduate of Crooms High School in Sanford, and he was a graduate of Jones High School in Orlando].
I guess their presence at FTU/UCF could be labeled pioneering. My father had graduated from Brevard Community College, and my mother had graduated from Seminole Community College. They were the first in their families to graduate from college. As an educator, I understand the power of that decision. Being the first is never easy because it is much easier to emulate others. So, in that, my parents were already badass. And then they chose to be the inaugural, integrated class of FTU.
So, in 1968, while Orlando was fighting hard to keep Valencia Junior College lily-white, my parents were integrating the hell out of pre-University of Central Florida. It's never fun being the minority, especially in a roomful of whites who were raised to question whether or not your blackness belonged. I know FTU (UCF) could not have been easy for either one of them, but they persevered.
My parents earned their Bachelor's degrees, got married in 1969, and their lives were forever changed. I wonder, though, if they ever knew true happiness. Four children and twelve years later, their marriage abruptly ended when my father was killed in a car accident.
I've decided to rewrite my biography in first person. I've kept the original version below, but I wanted a remix.
This photos of my parents above were taken in 1970, when my mother was pregnant with my older sister. I think about how young my parents were: posing with their dreams, unaware of where their lives would actually lead. They had met at Florida Technological University in 1968 (later renamed University of Central Florida), both of them having grown up in segregated neighborhoods and attended all black secondary schools [She was a graduate of Crooms High School in Sanford, and he was a graduate of Jones High School in Orlando].
I guess their presence at FTU/UCF could be labeled pioneering. My father had graduated from Brevard Community College, and my mother had graduated from Seminole Community College. They were the first in their families to graduate from college. As an educator, I understand the power of that decision. Being the first is never easy because it is much easier to emulate others. So, in that, my parents were already badass. And then they chose to be the inaugural, integrated class of FTU.
So, in 1968, while Orlando was fighting hard to keep Valencia Junior College lily-white, my parents were integrating the hell out of pre-University of Central Florida. It's never fun being the minority, especially in a roomful of whites who were raised to question whether or not your blackness belonged. I know FTU (UCF) could not have been easy for either one of them, but they persevered.
My parents earned their Bachelor's degrees, got married in 1969, and their lives were forever changed. I wonder, though, if they ever knew true happiness. Four children and twelve years later, their marriage abruptly ended when my father was killed in a car accident.
Biography Take One
From Orlando, Florida, LaTasha is the second of four children born to Walter and Clara Farmer. From the moment she began to read, LaTasha found books to be her passion. Some would even say her obsession. The joy that she found in reading was only matched by the pleasure she found in writing. Interestingly, even though English was always LaTasha's favorite subject, she enrolled in college as a pre-medicine major. The horrors of Math coursework, however, swiftly drove herfrom the field of medicine to the study of literature.
At the University of Florida, LaTasha eventually majored in English and became an occasional guest columnist for the college campus newspaper, The Alligator. She also pursued her interest in creative writing in the college's too few creative writing courses. A run-in with the political machine that underlined UF's graduate program quickly drove her from Gainesville and into the mire of public school education.
For nearly two decades, LaTasha has worked as an English teacher to middle school and then high school students. Her experiences in OCPS and NYC's DOE have reminded her that if there ever was a time to escape public school education--that time is now. Education and politics is definitely a recipe for disaster. And on that note, LaTasha has decided to pursue her first love--writing.
In the meantime, she is currently writing part-time, teaching full-time and raising the brightest eight-year-old on this side of creation.
From Orlando, Florida, LaTasha is the second of four children born to Walter and Clara Farmer. From the moment she began to read, LaTasha found books to be her passion. Some would even say her obsession. The joy that she found in reading was only matched by the pleasure she found in writing. Interestingly, even though English was always LaTasha's favorite subject, she enrolled in college as a pre-medicine major. The horrors of Math coursework, however, swiftly drove herfrom the field of medicine to the study of literature.
At the University of Florida, LaTasha eventually majored in English and became an occasional guest columnist for the college campus newspaper, The Alligator. She also pursued her interest in creative writing in the college's too few creative writing courses. A run-in with the political machine that underlined UF's graduate program quickly drove her from Gainesville and into the mire of public school education.
For nearly two decades, LaTasha has worked as an English teacher to middle school and then high school students. Her experiences in OCPS and NYC's DOE have reminded her that if there ever was a time to escape public school education--that time is now. Education and politics is definitely a recipe for disaster. And on that note, LaTasha has decided to pursue her first love--writing.
In the meantime, she is currently writing part-time, teaching full-time and raising the brightest eight-year-old on this side of creation.
PublicationsSlave Ship Rising (June 2017)
No Mammies Here (July 2017)
Black Borne (October 2017)
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EventsA-Coming Too ;)
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Awards•Not too sure about this one.;)
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